


Since I can't remember when

by etux



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: The First Avenger, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 17:18:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5257019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etux/pseuds/etux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers is in love with James Barnes. Some people realize that sooner than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Since I can't remember when

**Author's Note:**

> originally on [my tumblr](http://stevengrant.tumblr.com/post/133540047097/steve-rogers-realizes-hes-in-love-with-james)

Steve Rogers realizes he’s in love with James Buchanan Barnes the moment he can no longer see his blue coat against all the whiteness of the landscape.

It’s a cruel and painful way to realize you love someone but it is what it is. There’s nothing Steve can do about it, not anymore. He’s left to sit in a bar that has blown up, accompanied only by a bottle of alcohol that can’t get him drunk. So many lost opportunities.

  
  


Peggy Carter realizes Steve Rogers is in love with James Barnes when he crashes the plane into the ocean and tells her it’s his choice.

She was the one to tell Steve to respect the choice Barnes made. The choice of a man who loved Steve Rogers. (Because he did, of course he did, anyone with eyes could see that man looked at Rogers like he hung the moon.  _Rogers_ , not Captain America.) Now Steve is the one to make a choice. And even though Peggy knows he loves her too, she knows this choice is not for her. If Steve was choosing her, he’d be jumping out of that plane. But Steve is going down with it. He’s following the one he’s choosing.

  
  


James Barnes realizes Steve Rogers is in love with him  _late_ , but not  _too_ late.

It's months and months after he got away from HYDRA. Months after he let Steve find him. Months after the years of programming started to break. Weeks after he started to feel anything remotely close to comfortable in this life, in this body, in this world. He’s sitting on the couch he shares with Steve in the living room of the apartment he shares with Steve, and Steve sits right next to him. There’s something on the TV that they’re both supposed to be watching, but Bucky can’t concentrate. Because Steve is there. Right next to him. And it feels like the most right thing in the whole world.

  
  


“Are you in love with me?” he asks, because it’s the only option that seems even somewhat logical.

And Steve just looks at him and smiles that stupidly affectionate smile of his and asks, “Yeah, got a problem with that?” like the fight-picking punk he has always been.

“Nah”, Bucky says and throws his arm around Steve’s shoulders because  _no_ , he really does not have a problem with that.

 


End file.
